AWS vs GCP for Kubernetes cost: EKS or GKE for your cluster?

Quick answer

EKS and GKE both charge roughly 0.10 dollars per hour, about 73 dollars a month, per cluster control plane, and both bill node compute at standard instance rates. The cost differences come from the details: GKE Autopilot bills per pod resource request (paying only for what pods use), GKE Standard has historically offered free management for a single zonal cluster, and each cloud has different instance pricing, spot, and committed-use discounts. For most workloads control-plane cost is minor; the real cost driver is node compute, so the cheaper cloud is the one where your node instances and discounts are cheaper, not the Kubernetes fee itself.

Teams often ask whether AWS or GCP is cheaper for Kubernetes, expecting the answer to hinge on the managed Kubernetes fee. It rarely does. Both EKS and GKE charge a similar control-plane fee, and both run your workloads on ordinary VM instances that dominate the bill. The interesting differences are in the billing model and the discounts, not the headline Kubernetes price.

How the two price Kubernetes

Factor	EKS (AWS)	GKE (GCP)
Control plane	About 0.10 dollars per hour per cluster	About 0.10 dollars per hour per cluster
Node billing	EC2 instance rates	Compute Engine rates
Serverless mode	Fargate per pod	Autopilot per pod request
Discounts	Savings plans, spot	Committed use, sustained use, spot

Both control planes cost roughly 73 dollars a month per cluster, so on a handful of clusters the Kubernetes fee is a rounding error next to node compute. Where they diverge is the node model. GKE Autopilot bills for the CPU and memory your pods actually request, removing node-level waste, while EKS on EC2 or GKE Standard bills for whole nodes whether or not pods fill them, as the Autopilot versus Standard comparison covers.

Node compute is the real cost

Since nodes dominate, the cheaper cloud for your cluster is usually the one where your specific instance types and discounts are cheaper. AWS offers savings plans and spot; GCP offers committed-use discounts, automatic sustained-use discounts, and spot VMs. The effective node price after discounts, not the control-plane fee, decides the comparison, the same conclusion as the Fargate versus EC2 nodes analysis.

The many-cluster factor

The control-plane fee only becomes material when you run many clusters. At fifty clusters, 73 dollars each is 3650 dollars a month just for control planes, so a fleet strategy that consolidates clusters or uses namespaces for isolation matters more than the AWS-versus-GCP choice, echoing the cost per namespace discussion. For a few clusters, the fee is negligible on either cloud.

Choosing on total cost

Compare the effective node compute cost, after spot and committed or savings-plan discounts, for your actual instance mix on each cloud, then add the control-plane fee times your cluster count. GKE Autopilot's per-pod billing can win where node packing is poor; otherwise the cheaper node prices and discounts decide. Existing footprint and team familiarity usually outweigh the marginal difference. Price your node pools on each cloud against the resource catalog so the comparison reflects node compute, not just the Kubernetes fee.

FAQ

Is EKS or GKE cheaper?

The control-plane fees are nearly identical, roughly 0.10 dollars per hour or 73 dollars a month per cluster on both, so the Kubernetes fee rarely decides it. Node compute dominates the bill, so the cheaper cloud is usually the one where your specific instance types and discounts, AWS savings plans and spot versus GCP committed-use, sustained-use, and spot, are cheaper for your workload.

How much does managed Kubernetes control plane cost?

About 0.10 dollars per hour, roughly 73 dollars a month, per cluster on both EKS and GKE. For a handful of clusters this is a rounding error next to node compute. It only becomes material at scale: fifty clusters cost 3650 dollars a month in control-plane fees alone, which is where cluster consolidation strategy starts to matter more than the cloud choice.

Does GKE Autopilot save money versus EKS?

It can, where node packing is poor. GKE Autopilot bills for the CPU and memory your pods actually request, removing node-level waste from partially-filled nodes, while EKS on EC2 and GKE Standard bill for whole nodes whether pods fill them or not. If your clusters run with low node utilization, Autopilot's per-pod billing can be cheaper; well-packed nodes may be cheaper on standard instances.

What actually drives Kubernetes cost on AWS versus GCP?

Node compute, not the control-plane fee. Both clouds charge a similar control-plane fee, but your workloads run on ordinary VM instances that dominate the bill. The effective node price after discounts, savings plans and spot on AWS, committed-use, sustained-use, and spot on GCP, decides which cloud is cheaper for your specific instance mix and utilization.

How does C3X help compare Kubernetes cost across clouds?

C3X prices your node pools and control planes from Terraform before you deploy, so the node compute cost, the real driver, is a concrete number for each cloud. That lets you compare the effective cost of your instance mix on EKS versus GKE, add control-plane fees times cluster count, and choose the cheaper cloud on total node cost rather than the headline Kubernetes fee.

What to do next

Compare Kubernetes node cost across clouds before you build. C3X reads your Terraform and prices your resources against a live catalog. Start with the quickstart.